J. B. Jeyaretnam, Singaporean lawyer and politician (b. 1926)
Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (Tamil: ஜோசுவா பெஞ்சமின் ஜெயரத்தினம்; 5 January 1926 – 30 September 2008), more commonly known as J. B. Jeyaretnam or JBJ, was a Singaporean politician and lawyer. Born in Jaffna in 1926, Jeyaretnam grew up in Malaya and Singapore before he read law in London and qualified as a barrister in 1951. Upon returning to Singapore, he worked in the legal service from 1952 to 1963 before setting up his own law firm in 1968. He entered politics in 1971 and became the secretary-general of the opposition Workers' Party. Thereafter, he contested in three general elections (1972, 1976 and 1980) and two by-elections (1977 and 1979), but lost to candidates from the governing People's Action Party (PAP) in all of them.Jeyaretnam had his first electoral victory in the 1981 by-election in Anson SMC when he won with 51.93% of the vote against the PAP's Pang Kim Hin and United People's Front's Harbans Singh, becoming the first opposition politician to be elected to Parliament since Singapore gained independence in 1965. He contested in the 1984 general election in Anson SMC again and won with 56.81% of the vote against the PAP's Ng Pock Too.In 1986, following convictions for making false statements about the Workers' Party's accounts, Jeyaretnam was not only fined and imprisoned for a month, but also lost his parliamentary seat. After he was disqualified from practising law in 1987, he appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which reversed his disbarment in 1988 and called his conviction "a grievous injustice". Jeyaretnam appealed to President Wee Kim Wee for his convictions to be removed so that he could return to Parliament, but was denied.During the 1997 general election, Jeyaretnam joined a five-member Workers' Party team to contest in Cheng San GRC, but they lost with 45.18% of the vote against the PAP team. Since the Workers' Party team in Cheng San GRC were the "best losers" in an election in which there were fewer than six elected opposition Members of Parliament, they were offered one parliamentary seat as a Non-constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP), which Jeyaretnam took up. However, Jeyaretnam lost his NCMP seat and left the Workers' Party in 2001 when he was declared bankrupt after failing to keep up with damages from a series of defamation suits against him.Following his discharge from bankruptcy in 2007, Jeyaretnam founded the Reform Party in June 2008. He died of heart failure on 30 September that year.